Diary

How’s your lockdown going?

May 21, 2020 by Mo Fanning 1 Comment

How’s your lockdown going?

I’m borderline depressed. So I don’t plan on ending my lockdown life … or doing anything with it.

I haven’t learned another language or finished work on my next book.

Each day, the government issues press briefings; shit sandwiches where the bread is also made of shit.

If you go on Twitter and post something innocent like “Baking banana bread is brilliant”, within one minute a total stranger hits back with “My sister is a coeliac and this is a harmful view”, while someone else adds, “Your silence about croissants is telling”

Facebook needs a “we all know you’re not really this happy, Karen” button. Most newspaper websites feature user comments that read like Mein Kampf on shuffle.

I keep reading how the hardest part of lockdown is missing someone you saw every day. As far as I’m concerned, not having to sit opposite Pam with halitosis is more a blessing than a curse.

To keep things normal while working from home, I leave passive-aggressive notes when mugs don’t make it into the dishwasher. I’ve put all our food into sweaty plastic tubs and written my name on the outside.

I’ve never been one for sunbathing. While everyone else cultivates new moles to worry over, I’m happier indoors. My latest hobbies involve watching porn and making up dialogue, and reading reviews for places I can never go eat.

But, all of this should be over in time for Brexit, when we get to spend the next 20 years eating fox meat in an abandoned Debenhams on the outskirts of Inverness.

Five lockdown whinges

May 15, 2020 by Mo Fanning 1 Comment

Lockdown: You know how everyone has up-days and down-days? And during this pandemic, they’re only too ready to tell you all about it? Today is my depression down-day. And yes, you’ve most likely read the same self-indulgent nonsense from a hundred other people, but it’s my party and I’ll cry if I want to.

These are my five reasons not to be cheerful. I share them hoping that by getting them off my chest, depression will lift. And if you recognise how yourself in these words, you’ll feel better too.

What’s the point in writing a book?

Since lockdown, every vaguely sentient being has decided it’s time they found that one book that supposedly lives inside us all. WTF! There’s already enough competition. If every actor, comic, singer or lead guitarist now thinks this is their moment to shine, what chance is there for a mid-table writer with a feisty new RomCom in the works?

Is my book historical fiction?

I’ve been working on ‘Rebuilding Alexandra Small’ for the best part of a year. I’m editing a story written pre-lockdown. People hang out together. they kiss. Love happens. At one point there’s a very messy three-way bedroom scene (not what you’re thinking). Do I tweak scenes to imply contact? What will the new normal (TM) look like? If I started over, would I write a very different story? Most of what I know is the comedy of interaction. Am I past my sell-by date?

Even without distractions, I’m not writing

I can no longer blame my sluggish pace on lunch invitations or meeting mates for coffee. Or shopping. I’m on furlough from my proper job, and that means eight weeks of time to write. I figured If I got up early, sat down at nine and worked through, I’d soon complete ‘Rebuilding Alexandra Small’. Instead, I’ve picked a perfectly good plot to pieces, and spent days staring at the same piece of dialogue. That’s when I’m not hoovering, baking bread, polishing mirrors, washing windows, ironing, sitting down for a cup of tea, watching a box set or reading the news … or Facebook … or Twitter. Long story short, even with zero distractions, targets whoosh past.

What if I lose my proper job?

I can’t be alone in letting this fear fill my every waking minute. How can anyone write when they might end up having nothing left to do but write?

When all of this started, we told ourselves lockdown might last two to three months. Now we’re looking at the rest of this year. Maybe longer. And how many companies can afford to pay their staff until then?

As any writer will tell you, books don’t buy you much in the way of a life. Unless you’re already rich and famous … and then they absolutely do.

People annoy me – even more now we can’t mix

Thursday at 8pm should be a time for communal joy. The first time our nation clapped for carers, I was moved. Genuinely. My cold dark heart thawed. By week eight, the magic is gone. There’s an element of: if you don’t clap, you hate nurses and deserve to die. The ageing homo who lives above, blasts Vera Lynn from his beat box while the students two doors down take a break from what sounds like a constant state of virtual pub quiz. And when I see politicians who only three months earlier were busy selling off ‘our NHS’ clap their money-grabbing hands, my head hammers.

Having shared my five-item list, a weight has lifted. Maybe tomorrow, I’ll knuckle back down and tidy the words back into pages and into chapters and then a book.

Be kind.

That’s really all we have.

COVID-19: The end of gay life as we know it

March 17, 2020 by Mo Fanning 1 Comment

Thanks to COVID-19 – aka Corona – the world is on a massive duvet day, albeit one with the added risk of a slow, lingering death. Alone, eaten by a cat.

Literally the only thing anyone wants to talk about these days is self isolation. It’s like when people at work show you pictures of their children. I can’t find a way to care less. I’m an introvert with OCD tendencies. Being told to stay indoors and wash my hands every few minutes is bliss.

We’re supposed to club together and remember the blitz.

Any gay man old enough to actually remember the blitz is a Brexit-voting, property-hogging panic-shopper who lies about their age.

During the blitz, people went to their beds not knowing if their house would be standing in the morning. I lie awake worrying I paid too much for hand sanitiser in that frenzied eBay auction that got out of hand.

COVID-19 is anti-gay

They say a virus doesn’t discriminate. That’s not true. COVID-19 hates the gays and could mean the end of LGBTQ life as we know it.

2020 Grindr has become a shirtless LinkedIn.

There’s talk of cancelling the Eurovision Song Contest. We’re nothing without gay Christmas.

Single gay men will retreat behind closed doors, only to emerge blinking into the light come August, holding up an arthritic claw and declaring they’ve completed Pornhub.

What matters most is losing contact with our straight friends. Without your Primark mistakes to mock, we become empty vessels. Spare a thought for your Gay BFFs. Send selfies and demand feedback.

We’ll meet again.

Age before beauty

March 10, 2020 by Mo Fanning 1 Comment

Age before beauty makes no sense. If our society valued growing old over looking young, magazines like Best would carry adverts for wrinkle cream not anti-wrinkle cream. Grey pride would be a thing. Paris Fashion Week would major on fleece fabric and loose-fitting slacks with elasticated ankle cuffs.

The other day on a bus, a girl took my breath away. She said, ‘Would you like my seat?’

I’m at that age where if there isn’t gravy, I haven’t had my dinner. Half of my emails offer vouchers for money off thermal nightwear or gadgets to open jam jars. The drugs I take are no longer recreational and I take naps after a challenging sandwich.

Friends insist that with age comes wisdom and serenity, but with each passing year, the urge grows stronger to call local radio shows and moan about parking.

I no longer recognise the music being played in Tesco. My go-to aisle is the one where they sell dented tins, and nothing excites me more than bulk buying. I already own 16 spare toilet rolls and six extra bags of pasta. I was panic buying before it became a thing.

Genuine joy

When stuff falls on the floor, I leave it there. Being able to perform gravity-defying athletic sexual acts is great, but there’s genuine joy in putting down your car keys and finding them straight away.

With online forms, I scroll so far for my year of birth it’s causing hard skin to form. Parts of me have sagged. When I get out of bed, my scrotum hits the floor before my feet.

I don’t get social media. Twitter is like someone put Mein Kampf on shuffle.

Kind people tell me the best is yet to come, that I’m middle-aged. There’s no way I‘ll live another 54 years. Even if I could, I wouldn’t. I’ve bought sticking plasters, and that’s a slippery slope.

Plasters – carpet slippers – death.

Weight loss – simply the BEST

February 25, 2020 by Mo Fanning 1 Comment

Have you ever stumbled upon a magazine called ‘Best’? You’ll find it in every low-grade supermarket next to the crossword puzzle books. They’re designed to sharpen the mind. ‘Best’ sets out to ruin it.

Reading ‘Best’ is like having your nasty aunty Pat round for tea. It’s sixty pages of fat-shaming, miracle diets and Meghan Markle bitchery, interspersed with motivational stories of women who lost weight by eating tar. Two dry heaves and a dizzy turn later, they’d lost a pound. There’s a problem page. Written by Vanessa Feltz. Who in their right mind takes advice from Vanessa Feltz?

‘Best’ is addictive. I have two settings. Worried for the world and craving cheese, and yet ‘Best’ has me convinced I’ll lose ten pounds in ten days by committing to their good sleep diet. You swig half a pint of Night Nurse before each meal. By the time desert arrives, you’re face-down in a plate of spaghetti.

Most mornings, the man in my mirror looks like something the dog slept on. My body isn’t a temple. It’s a phone … on emergency battery.

Lose weight … change everything

I know I should change my diet. Healthy eating involves more than an ability to refuse doughnuts. We’re talking serious lifestyle changes. Much as I’d like to fit 32-inch jeans, I’m not getting up two hours early each morning to turn a head of cauliflower into couscous for an exciting weekday supper.

I refuse to follow any diet plan where breakfast is two almonds and you get to lick an apple for lunch. You skip dinner to cry at photos of yourself aged 17 in Speedos.

I’ve tried a Fitbit. It was like having the bitchiest of gay best friends on my wrist. Most days, I spend my time counting down the hours until I’m allowed to eat again.

Meditation appealed. I loved being able to call lying down a lifestyle choice. I downloaded a class and put it on, before promptly falling asleep. At three in the morning, I woke starving and ate a whole bag of oven chips. Still frozen.

I’ve become an organ donor. It’s one way to make sure I get to wear slim-fit coffin jeans.

Whatever ‘Best’ wants me or its target market readers to believe, dealing with grief is hard when I can’t even drown my feelings in food.